Shifting currents, hidden knots: Talking the scene

Abstract

Shifting currents, hidden knots: Talking the scene explores a collection of evolving relationships informed by a joint purchase (between myself and fellow collaborator Katie Louise Williams) of an umbilical cord prop from the American television series The X-Files in 2013. The umbilical cord prop has become the catalyst for the connective links drawn throughout the scope of this thesis and is reflected through an enquiry that engages in multiple temporalities and the threads that connect them to a knowledge system. In order to examine the meaning-making paradigms that structure my engagement with the cord, emphasis is placed on process, the way the threads come together and in some instances, belong together. Structural linkages occur whereby places and spaces are related between not only humans and environments, but also objects, including inanimate ones. The cord informs a theoretical inquiry into such connectedness. Using both Indigenous frameworks of knowing which include intuition, reciprocity and responsiveness to environment, as well as western critical theories centred around film, performance and objects, I bring together both relations to objects and relations to people as crucial issues to explore. The case studies woven throughout this thesis represent not only a small collection of evolving relationships, but also collaborative art practices that are under continuous construction. In working towards a more participatory means of knowledge production it is essential that such an inquiry is able to develop without being restricted to a singular mode of knowing. Accordingly, this thesis includes a combination of narrative, co-authored texts, personal anecdote and theoretical emphasis to open up a certain discursive space, where the knowledge I am uncovering exists. In moving away from a more traditional art practice, which is confined to a contained studio practice, to one which is more responsive to social situations and histories; the writing of this thesis is a manifestation of my artistic practice and vice versa. It is a reciprocal movement that is under constant re-negotiation in order to form a connected whole.